Graduate School Opportunities at the University of Virginia

The following comes to us from Matt Hedstrom, at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia:

The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce a newly redesigned graduate curriculum in American Religions, offering the MA and PhD degrees. The program focuses on the religious cultures of the United States and the Americas in both historical and contemporary contexts. As such, the program is interdisciplinary in its methodology, incorporating historical, theological, literary, and anthropological approaches, and draws on the expertise of the department's large faculty across traditions and methods. Students in this subfield are encouraged to work with faculty in various other departments at the University of Virginia, including Anthropology, Art and Architectural History, English, History, Media Studies, Politics, and Sociology. Students may also draw upon the resources of interdisciplinary programs such as the Carter G. Woodson Center for African American and African Studies, the Program in American Studies, the Program in Jewish Studies, and Studies in Women and Gender (SWAG).

For more information, please go here.

What the Foucault (Do We Know)?: FSU's Grad Symposium Redux

Kelly J. Baker

As I am still recovering from a whirlwind weekend at Florida State University's Tenth Annual Graduate Symposium, I wanted to note how much I enjoyed my time this weekend and what a boon this conference is to religious studies graduate students. What you all should know from the outset is that I am not a neutral observer. I love this conference, and Mike Pasquier and I even organized it long, long ago. (Hat tip to our own contributor Emily Clark was the organizational guru this year).

Now, I did not attend every panel nor did I attempt to, so I encourage readers and participants who attended other panels to send their reflections along. What I was able to do was to talk to graduate students of alma mater and other institutions about their own work and mine as well. The paper presenters swung for the fences, and I enjoyed their energy, evidence, and historiographical strategies. Grads in American religious history presented on papers ranging from Emily Post to Christian manhood to the Holy Land Experience to body studies to Burning Man to border saints to the problems of "lived religion" to beards and shaving. The brilliance of this symposium is that it allows a welcoming and encouraging environment for grads to present their work with feedback from the likes of John Corrigan, Amy Koehlinger, Amanda Porterfield, Kathryn Lofton, and Sylvester Johnson to name only the Americanists. (Any graduate student in religious studies writ large should plan to go next year.)

The keynote with the best title ever was "What the Foucault Do We Do Now?" with Matthew Day, Sylvester Johnson, Matthew Kapstein and Katie Lofton interrogated the place of power in the study of religion, the institution of the academy, and the genealogy of religious studies. The panel paired scholars of ranging interests from methods and theory to Buddhism to American religious history and posed the question of how power (read Foucault) functions both for our subjects of study but also for our positions as scholars. For the interest of RIAH readers, Day, Johnson and Lofton proved to engage exactly what is at stake in religious studies from very different positions. Johnson prodded the strange bifurcation between the academy and the "real" world, and he argued compellingly that just because the origins of religious studies are bound to colonial endeavor does not mean we (religious studies scholars) should burden ourselves solely with origins. Instead, our knowledge and expertise applies to the "real" world because the academy, despite various attempts, is still bound to our contemporary moments. We are experts, we have power, and we should use it.

Lofton employed IBM advertisements to discuss the merger of power and subjectivity. She suggested that these particular ads did not uplift individuals but rather created a powerless collective at the whim of power grids, bad traffic, and other mundane problems of contemporary life. Each of us faces the similar hum drum, and the ads questioned our agency even in how companies market products not to me or you, but some amorphous us. From ads to religion, Lofton noted that perhaps religion is best understood as repository in which things, ideas, and brands collect. My sense was that religion was archive, hodge podge, even bricolage in this analogy. To understand religion is to understand the pile-up.

In my assessment, Day's contribution offered the opposite of Lofton--religion as empty. Day was troubled by the category of religion, the discipline of religious studies. Building upon Bruce Lincoln and Russell McCutcheon, Day argued that religious studies scholars don't problematize religion, so that as a category religion is valueless because of its infinitude. He asked can it be art or sports? Moreover, he wants religious studies scholars to question the reliance upon "experience" as a measure of religion. What does it mean? Or more importantly, what is at stake when we gesture to experience? Day's critique suggested a need for a critical edge about what is religion and what we study when we assert religion as our subject matter. Moreover, does the gesture to experience limit our subject matter?

During Q&A, I asked Lofton and Day to compare their stances about religion as repository or as empty. What is at stake in empty or full? Their answers are theirs, but I couldn't help but wonder what my own assessment of this was. Part of me wants to claim the middle path of "can't it be both?", but that is terribly unsatisfying. The power of religion as a category is what is at stake in their assertions, and I wonder how often religious studies scholars interrogate what exactly religion is in our own work. Is it empty or full? Is it value-free or value-filled? Do we craft our own categories of religion as experience, belief, practice, etc? Do we use the categories of those we study? In my own work, I confront the strange yet different assumptions about "good religion"(read helpful and therapeutic) versus "bad religion" (read harmful or malicious) because I work on the "bad." The commentary usually moves something like "bad religion" is not religion at all. What is religion becomes, then, essential to how to approach the Klan, the hate movement, or even my newer fascination with apocalypticism. How I make the case that this is actually religious becomes significant. I point to the pile-up: theology, ritual, practice, and belief that all show the Protestant nature of the Klan. Yet, I could also point to the emptiness (malleability) of Protestant as a label, of religion as a construct, yet I don't. I could though. Empty or full?

Graduate students, if these kinds of questions are interesting to you, plan on attending next year's symposium at FSU. If they aren't, plan on attending or presenting anyway because you can't beat the encouraging environment, the weather, or the chance to ask, "What the Foucault do we do now?"

FSU's 10th Annual Graduate Student Symposium

February 18-20 marks the 10th Annual Graduate Student Symposium sponsored by the Department of Religion at Florida State University. Participants include many names that are familiar to our blog readers: Amanda Porterfield, John Corrigan, Sylvester Johnson, Kathryn Lofton, Amy Koehlinger, Arthur Remillard, and Kelly Baker, among others. Graduate students from 20 universities will be presenting their ideas about several topics, including the politics of conflict, ritual practice and community identity, issues of empowerment and subjugation, creation and preservation of sacred place and time, legitimization of power, divine authority, and roles of lay practice.

If you missed the CFP this year, you should definitely consider attending next year. I know I'm biased, having graduated from FSU, but this is an incredible graduate conference with all sorts of opportunities for professional development, friendship building, and good old-fashioned fun. Can I get a witness?!

For a conference schedule, click here.

Heidelberg Center for American Studies Spring Academy

Paul Harvey

I've been asked by Hilde, our Senior Norwegian Correspondent, to forward along information on this unique opportunity for finishing graduate students, to present their work with fellow American and European colleagues in Heidelberg. Hilde writes: "I attended the Spring Academy last year, and it was a wonderful experience! It's a great mix of students from Europe and the USA, covers many disciplines, and has a supportive and safe atmosphere to present your material." Hilde, any chance the Oslo Soul Children will be a warm-up act at the conference?

More information below:

__________________________________________________

HCA Spring Academy:

American History, Culture & Politics

HCA Spring Academy on American History, Culture & Politics is an annual, one-week interdisciplinary conference for Ph.D. candidates working in different fields of American studies.

Every year twenty outstanding Ph.D. students from European and American universities come to Heidelberg to present their dissertation projects. All presentations are thematically arranged into ten panels. Participants are requested to prepare a twenty-minute presentation of their research projects which is followed by a forty-minute discussion session. Four experts are invited for afternoon workshops that elaborate on topics discussed during the conference.

Possible topics for discussion are American literature and culture, U.S. history, domestic and foreign policy, as well as the economy and aspects of jurisprudence. Race, class, and gender are frequently employed analytical categories. This diversity of disciplines and approaches enables students from different academic backgrounds to become part of a unique international intellectual network which has been successfully established and broadened by the HCA in the last six years.

Florida State University Graduate Symposium

Coming off the 2010 Annual American Academy of Religion meeting, I thought it was especially relevant to blog about the Florida State University Graduate Symposium hosted each year by FSU's religion graduate students. The call for papers has been up on h-net for about a month now, but I particularly wanted to draw the attention of my fellow Americanists.

The Florida State University Department of Religion is pleased to announce its 10^th Annual Graduate Student Symposium to be held February 18-20, 2011 in Tallahassee, Florida. This year’s symposium will be centered on the theme “Discourses of Ritual and Power.”

Dr. Matthew Kapstein, of the University of Chicago and Directeur d'études of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, will deliver this year’s keynote address. His lecture is tentatively titled “Spiritual Exercises in Indian Buddhist Philosophy: The Thought of Pierre Hadot in a Comparative Perspective.” Also, we are pleased to once again host Dr. Kathryn Lofton of Yale University as a guest respondent.

Presentations should be approximately 15 to 20 minutes in length and will receive faculty responses. Those proposing papers in the sub-field of American Religious History can look forward to Dr. Lofton, Dr. John Corrigan, Dr. Amanda Porterfield, and Dr. Amy Koehlinger offering thoughtful responses. In addition, every year respondents select the best graduate paper to receive the Leo F. Sandon Award, an endowed award named for the Religion Department's former chair.

Every year, this conference is a big success. There is no registration fee, and food and drink is provided throughout the weekend.

Proposals including an abstract of approximately 300 words, a list of key terms, and a one-page CV should be submitted by December 1, 2010 for review. Final papers must be submitted by January 15, 2011. Please send proposals to fsureligionsymposium@gmail.com

Florida State University Graduate Symposium

The program schedule for the 9th Annual Florida State University Graduate Symposium is now available. Thirty-nine graduate students from sixteen different institutions will meet February 19-21 in Tallahassee, Florida, where they will discuss matters related to the symposium’s theme, “Sects and Sexuality: Issues of Division and Diversity.” The list of respondents includes some of American religious history’s most notable scholars: Amanda Porterfield, John Corrigan, Amy Koehlinger, and Kathryn Lofton. Bernadette Brooten, the Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University, will provide the keynote address on Friday evening, followed by the announcement of the Leo Sandon Best Paper Award. On Saturday, Professors Brooten, Corrigan, Lofton, and Nicole Kelley will conduct a roundtable discussion on the incorporation of gender in scholarship. Later, symposium participants will be invited to screen the documentary, “Fallen Angel: The Outlaw Larry Norman,” which recounts the rise and fall of Larry Norman, the father of Christian rock music.

Biased sidenote: To all the student readers of this blog, you would be hard-pressed to find a more professional and enjoyable graduate conference in the United States. Its strength as a place for conversation about American religion is obvious. What the program doesn’t say is that you will eat and drink, almost always for FREE, until your stomach is beyond content. If you missed this year, take heart in the fact that there’s always next year. If you’re already going… Well, I’m jealous. Go ReligioNoles!

FSU Symposium in Religion: Proposals Now Due 12/7

Kelly Baker

Just a small note to say this is a fabulous conference for graduate students to test out their work. I enjoyed participating and going, and this is great way to prepare for larger national conferences (and the audience is very supportive). The FSU graduate students organize a mean conference with time for discussion and getting to know one's peers in the field(s). The added bonus is both of the speakers, which includes the illustrious Katie Lofton, one of our contributors. Plus, the title for this year is awesome

DEADLINE EXTENSION to Dec. 7, 2009

The Florida State University Department of Religion’s 9th Annual Graduate Student Symposium has partnered with the Society for Women’s Advancement in Philosophy’s 6th Annual Conference to present an interdisciplinary graduate student symposium to be held February 19-21, 2010. Graduate students are invited to submit an abstract (300-800 words) with a list of key terms and a CV to Brooke Sherrard by Monday, December 7th, 2009.

Sects and Sexuality: Issues of Division and Diversity

In addition, we would like to formally announce our Key Note Speaker, BERNADETTE BROOTEN, Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University and recipient of both a MacArthur Fellowship and a Ford Foundation grant on sexual ethics and religious traditions. Her works include _Women Leaders in The Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues_ (Scholars Press, 1982) and _Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism_ (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

The symposium will also feature comments by KATHRYN LOFTON, an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Her first book, _Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon_, is forthcoming from the University of California Press. She is currently working on her second monograph, _The Modernity in Mr. Shaw: Modernisms and Fundamentalisms in American Culture_, which examines the formation of sexual identity through the life of one Presbyterian fundamentalist, John Balcom Shaw (1860-1935).

We encourage submissions from graduate students in all levels and fields with interdisciplinary interest in the study of Religion and Philosophy. We also welcome a variety of methods and approaches, particularly in regards to (1) Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy; (2) American Religious History; (3) Religions of Western Antiquity; (4) History and Ethnography of Religions (specializing in Asian, African, Mediterranean, and Western European Religions); and (5) Philosophy dealing with Race, Class, Sexuality, and Gender.

FSU Graduate Student Symposium CFP

The Florida State University Department of Religion’s 9th Annual Graduate Student SymposiumThe Florida State University Department of Religion’s 9th Annual Graduate Student Symposium has partnered with the Society for Women’s Advancement in Philosophy’s 6th Annual Conference to present an interdisciplinary graduate student symposium to be held February 19-21, 2010 .

Graduate students are invited to submit proposals that engage this year’s theme:
Sects and Sexuality: Issues of Division and Diversity

Because we feel that constructive collaborative efforts are important to the advancement of the academic community as a whole, we encourage submissions from graduate students in all fields and levels with interdisciplinary interest in the study of Religion and Philosophy. We also welcome a variety of methods and approaches, particularly in regards to

(1) Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy;
(2) American Religious History;
(3) Religions of Western Antiquity;
(4) History and Ethnography of Religions (specializing in Asian, African, Mediterranean, and Western European Religions); and
(5) Philosophy dealing with Race, Class, Sexuality, and Gender.

This is an Open Call for papers. Possible topics may include, but are not limited, to: Celibacy and Asceticism, Issues of Inclusion and Exclusion, Notions of the Forbidden, Sectarian Conflicts, and Community Identities.

Presentations should be 15-20 minutes in length and will receive faculty responses at the conclusion of each panel. The Leo F. Sandon Award will be given for the best paper of the symposium.

Proposal submissions are due December 1, 2009, and should consist of an abstract (up to 800 words) including a list of key terms for review and a CV. Final papers must be submitted by January 15, 2010.

Proposals should be emailed to Brooke Sherrard, fsugradsymposium@gmail.com.

Please refer to the FSU Department of Religion website for more information.

Cold as Ice to Me

Paul Harvey

Not specifically on religious history, but on the state of graduate school in History or the Humanities more generally, especially for you advanced undergrads. or early grad students who may read this blog:

Anthony Grafton, "Graduate School in a New Ice Age," ponders the meaning of life for graduate students as even the best-endowed of institutions move rapidly from prosperity to austerity, and why it is that graduate school, in comparison to an earlier era, has become "formidably professionalized." You can read it alongside Tim Burke's characteristically excellent post Oh the Humanities, and Patricia Cohen's "Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times," from Saturday's New York Times.

Long story short: I'm SO glad I finished up graduate school well before California went bankrupt, and in an era when a bit of wandering, and wondering, could still happen before settling on "the professional career."

The State of the Humanities

MICHAEL PASQUIER

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences recently released the Humanities Indicators Prototype, which is the result of a decade-long collaborative study of the state of the humanities in the United States. In a nutshell, the Academy “hope[s] that the Humanities Indicators Prototype will equip researchers and policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, humanities councils and other public institutions with better statistical tools for answering basic questions about primary and secondary humanities education, undergraduate and graduate education in the humanities, the humanities workforce, levels and sources of program funding, public understanding and impact of the humanities, and other areas of concern in the humanities community.”

Here are a few of the findings based primarily on 2004 statistics:

Overall, between 10% and 12% of all B.A. degrees are in the humanities, behind the social sciences and business.

2.6% of B.A. degrees in the humanities fall under the category of Religion. English was the highest with 31.7%. History posted 17.7%.

Over 70% of all B.A. degrees in the humanities go to “white/non-Hispanic” students.

Over 60% of all B.A. degrees in the humanities go to women.

Over 40% of all undergraduate students take U.S. History survey courses. 15% take General/Comparative Religion courses.

Average GRE scores for humanities majors: 554 verbal/567 quantitative. For Religion majors: 556/594. For History majors: 542/554. Classics and Philosophy majors posted the highest scores.

Less than 5% of all master’s degrees are in the humanities. Less than 9% of all doctoral degrees are in the humanities, the second from last among all fields ahead of the arts.

Of all master’s degrees, 3.4% are in Religion, 11.8% in History, and 36% in English (high); approximately 65% go to white/non-Hispanic students.

Of all doctoral degrees, 5.1% are in Religion, 20% in History, and 28% in English (high); approximately 65% humanities doctoral degrees go to white/non-Hispanic students (2,384 white/non-Hispanic, 156 African American, 175 Hispanic, 138 Asian or Pacific Islander, 222 Other/Unknown, and 594 Temporary Resident).

Just over 60% of all master’s degrees in the humanities go to women. Just over 50% of all doctoral degrees go to women.

9.7 years is the median number of years for completion of doctoral degrees in the humanities (highest overall). All Fields is 8 years.

Over 28% of humanities graduate students rely on their own resources to pay for education, compared to Physical Sciences at 5.3% (lowest) and Education at 60.3 (highest).

4% of humanities-related jobs are in post-secondary education, compared to 37% in primary/secondary education.

56% of all those awarded Ph.D.’s in the humanities leave university with a definite job commitment.

Humanities faculty has increased 24% since 1999. History faculty has seen a slight but steady increase over the last decade, while Religion and Philosophy faculties have seen a slight decrease in the last 5 years.

Roughly 5% of humanities faculty are categorized at Hispanic, 5% as African American, and 5% as Asian or Pacific Islander, all substantially lower than most other fields.

40% of tenured humanities faculty are women.

Humanities full-time faculty receive the lowest salaries of all fields with a median income of $61,852, compared to overall median of all fields with $70,414 and Engineering (highest) with $89,878.

I could go on. Suffice it to say that this is a highly informative study that everyone in the academic profession should consider. For graphs and explanations and much, much, much, much more, go to http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/. To read the press release, click here.

The Disappearing Periodical Room

Author's Note: I wrote this piece sometime last year and never got around to publishing it. It does not deal directly with religion and American history, but I hope it still might be useful to our readers. --JF

The Disappearing Periodical Room

By John Fea

Recently I was doing some research in the library at the college where I teach. It is a small library that is much in need of a facelift and a bigger budget; but what it lacks in physical and monetary resources it makes up for with a dedicated and gifted staff.

On this day I was in search of a recently published journal article. I headed straight to the new periodical room where I was sure I would find it on display, but as I scanned the titles on the shelves it was apparent that the library did not subscribe to the journal I needed. This did not surprise me since I know the library is operating with limited funds and as a result subscriptions to a few academic journals have been canceled.

What did surprise me, however, was the response I received from a librarian after she processed my interlibrary loan request. “We subscribe to this journal electronically,” she wrote in longhand on my form. And then she directed me to the database where I could access it.

I was thrilled, in a nerdy sort of academic way, by the fact that all it would take was a click of the print button to get the article into my hands. This meant that I would avoid having to take the journal to the copy room, opening it on the copier screen to the point of breaking the spine, and adjusting the reduction feature on the copier so that two pages of the journal would fit on one page of letter-sized paper.

I learned that day just how many on-line journals were available through my campus library. I could even access articles from home—an option that I knew would come in handy during my upcoming sabbatical. Sure I would push my printing budget to the limit (I prefer to read journal articles in hard copy form so I can mark them up), but it was worth it.

At this point I should probably pause to confess that I am a journal junkie. It all started when I wrote a divinity school paper on the history of American fundamentalism that my professor encouraged me to publish. When I asked him to suggest a few journals that might be interested in the piece, he told me to go to the library, peruse the new periodical shelves, and find a publication that was suitable.

That was all the incentive I needed. I spent the rest of the day familiarizing myself with dozens of journals, mostly in theology and religious studies. I had been in the periodical room before, to research a paper or read the sports page between classes, but now I started to look at this place with the eyes of a potential author.

From that point forward the periodical room became my favorite place on campus. Whenever I visited a new college or university I went straight to this section of the library. I found myself judging the quality of an institution by the size and scope of their journal collection. It would not be too far fetched to say that I learned the profession—in my case American history—in the periodical room of the university where I did my graduate work. I rarely left this place without a stack of journals carefully bookmarked with a slip of scrap paper, ready to be copied.

But most of the articles I looked at during these trips to the periodical room were not copied. They were merely perused. Over the years I turned journal browsing into an art form. In the process I was immersing myself in the field. I learned what kind of scholarship was hot by looking at tables of contents. I identified new scholarship by skimming book reviews. I gleaned the basics of how to submit an essay by reading submission guidelines. There were always new journals to explore and new articles appearing quarterly.

As I began to develop professional contacts, I could see what my friends and colleagues were publishing. I sometimes left the periodical room deflated because someone had already published the essay I had someday hoped to write. At other times I left excited about an article that gave me some new perspective on my dissertation topic. And, of course, I would be spurred on, as I still am today, about one my article ideas that seemed to meet the editorial needs of this or that journal.

Every now and then I receive an e-mail from one of my college’s librarians informing me that he would like to cancel a subscription to a hard copy journal because it is available at a reduced cost through an on-line service. I am sympathetic to these requests and usually tell him to go ahead and cancel. Journals are getting more and more expensive. (Did I mention yet that we do not have Harvard’s library budget?) It also seems to make sense environmentally to go this way. And think of the space on-line journals will save.

Yet I also wonder what might be lost in the decision to have the bulk of a college’s academic journals available only via the computer screen. Sure, scholars in a hurry will be able to find their materials faster and more efficiently, but the art of browsing will be lost.

I never went to library school, but I am convinced that college and university libraries should function as more than the academic equivalent of a convenience store. A library periodical room—no matter how small and budget-constricted-- invites us to feed our minds with a veritable feast of new ideas. Some of my most wonderful and unexpected intellectual discoveries happen when I allow my mind and body to wander in a place where I am surrounded by the published thoughts of others. This is a very different approach from the quick and easy information fix that most of us are after when we enter the library.

Periodical rooms invite us to let the life of the mind and the activities of the guild soak into our very being as we glance at footnotes, introductory paragraphs, and the institutional affiliations of authors and members of editorial boards. Librarians understand this, but their hands are too often tied by administrators and budget officials who just don’t get it.

In the everyday busyness of an academic life an hour spent reading periodicals may be an irresponsible use of one’s time. But in my experience the slow meandering through narrow aisles of scholarly quarterlies continues to shape me as a scholar and an intellectual. On-line journals are great, but let’s be careful to embrace technological progress with caution, always aware of unexpected consequences.

Guilt As An Inherent Feature of Relaxation

BY ART REMILLARD

In a recent conversation, a colleague reminded me of an oft-forwarded e-mail entitled, "You Might Be a Graduate Student If..." While I received the forward often at Florida State, I never saved it. So (instead of doing real work) I performed a quick Google search, which led me to this list. Many of the items still apply to my post-graduate student life. Here are my top three picks. Feel free to add your own...

1. You understand jokes about Foucault.
2. You have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
3. Your friends and family become concerned because although you can now recite, word for word, the most popular theories in your field, you have lost all semblance of common sense.

For those of us who didn't get a completed dissertation in our stockings...

BY KELLY BAKER

The AHA's December edition of Perspectives provides a manageable and fairly painless advice on completion of the dreaded dissertation. Much of the advice is geared toward those entering into the ABD stage, and Andrew McIlwaine Bell points out that time is not on our proverbial side. Bell's advice is mostly helpful and seeks assuage the anxiety that can overcome anyone faced with completing a dissertation. However, I would point out that Bell's suggestion of being unemployed while writing is unattainable for many (including myself). Though, I heartily agree with his suggestion that one should write everyday. He relays this anecdote:

At the 2004 AHA annual meeting in Washington, Robert Remini told his audience that he used to reward himself with a martini on the days he wrote six or more pages. Martinis may not be your cup of…er…gin, but you should be able to find something pleasurable to indulge in at the end of a productive workday.

As someone in the midst of her dissertation, I discovered that I was much more productive if I set a word limit for every day. After I meet the limit, I can do whatever I want for the rest of the day including writing more, staring dumbly at my monitor, or playing with a mean cat. And Starbucks proves to be an adequate reward for me. So for those writing or those advising we who are writing, the article is worth a read, especially since Santa brought me knee-high boots instead of a finished dissertation.

History or Religious Studies?

BY JOHN FEA

I have been counseling several former students recently about graduate school. A few of them want to study American religious history but are unsure whether to pursue graduate work in Religion/Religious Studies or American History. I have tried to explain to them that they could write a dissertation on American religious history in either field (depending, of course, on the program and the availability of an advisor in this sub-field), but their coursework, comps, methodology, and job considerations would be quite different depending on which kind of program they choose to pursue. I have also tried to get them to envision what kind of introductory college-level course they would like to teach regularly--a U.S. History Survey course or an Intro to Religion course (or something comparable). Most of them love American Religious History and have not considered that broad training in their discipline is usually in order if they want to land a job.

I know that our readership (and our contributors) include scholars and graduate students in both History and Religious Studies who share a research interest in American Religious History. I am curious to hear if you were faced with the same dilemma that some of my students are now faced with. How did you decide to go with Religion over History or vice-versa?

McNeil Center Fellowship -- John Fea

Fellowship Announcement: McNeil Center for Early American Studies

Today I received announcements for two residential fellowships offered by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Of particular note to readers of this blog is the “E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Fellowship in Early American Religious Studies.” This dissertation fellowship is open to Ph.D candidates in any discipline “researching any aspect of religion in North America in the Atlantic World.” And you have plenty of time to apply—the deadline is March 1, 2008.

The other fellowship is the two-year Barra Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008-2010. The Barra Fellowship is not geared specifically to scholars studying religion, but I know that the Center is certainly open to considering those working in this area. The deadline is November 1, 2007 and I believe the search committee conducts preliminary interviews at the AHA.

On a personal note, I was a fellow at the McNeil Center in the late 1990s and I cannot say enough positive things about the experience. This is a wonderful community of early American scholars convened by Dan Richter, the Center’s director. (Richard Dunn, the founding director, ran the Center during my stint as a fellow). My seventeen months in residence at Penn gave me opportunities to write, research, visit archives, present my work, share dissertation drafts, and network with other scholars. I am very grateful for the experience. If you do early American history I encourage you to apply. For more details, see the McNeil Center website.

He's Back!

PhD In History, a formerly anonymous blogger whose blog suddenly disappeared last week, is back (note to self: fix blogroll), this time revealing his identity and still full of interesting and thoughtful posts about being a graduate student, the profession of history, how the faculty hierarchy breaks down, who's getting jobs where, and much more. I'm glad to see PhD in History back, sort of like the blogosphere's answer to AHA Today. Both are worth reading, especially in dialogue.

Dissertation and publishing

A supplement to yesterday's entry on publishing advice: Tim Burke adds some more good stuff here, focused specifically on dissertation writers -- at a stage before most of the suggestions given in the previous post. A little excerpt:

5. Do not be a perfectionist with your dissertation. Write the sucker and
damn the torpedoes. Just make sure it’s good enough for your committee. If you
*can* write it in such a way that it will require little work to make into a
publishable book, do it. For example, make the opening and inevitable
“literature review” as modular as possible and plan to just rip the entire thing
out of the book manuscript. If you embed your review of the relevant scholarship
inside your analysis, that may be more artful for the dissertation, but it’s
more of a pain in the context of the manuscript, unless it’s really artful and
worth keeping even in the book.

6. Submit your dissertation as quickly as you
can for publication. Don’t screw around. Unless it really is a serious mess, or
a hideous, soul-destroying bore, you might as well seek a publisher quickly.
Because if you spend five years revising and revising until it is absolutely
perfect, and then submit it, I promise you that the peer reviewers are going to
demand changes anyway. It could be utter perfection–you could be Jonathan Spence
or Ferdnand Braudel–and peer reviewers are still going to ask for revisions. So
don’t spend too long writing and don’t spend too long revising.

Graduate School

Here's a great list of Required Readings: A Compendium of Links for Graduate Students. Everything from thinking about going to grad. school, to being on the job market, for potential or current PhD students, and for those who wish they had such practical advice back in the day. Also recommended is Tim Burke's answer to the question "Should I Go To Graduate School?"